Foreign remittances dip by 2.6 percent year-to-date per BSP
MANILA – Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos in August 2020 dipped year-on-year by 4.2 percent to US$2.756 from US$2,875 billion recorded in August 2019.
In a statement released today, the BSP said cumulative remittances for the first eight months of the year reached US$21,414 billion with “a slight decrease” of 2.6 percent from US$21,995 billion recorded in the comparable period in 2019.
Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more went down to US$2,118 billion in August 2020 which is 4.6 percent lower than US$2.221 billion recorded in August 2019.
Meanwhile, remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than a year fell by 2.2 percent to US$580 million in August 2020 from US$593 million a year ago.
Cash remittances sent through banks declined by 4.1 percent to US$2.483 billion in August 2020 from US$2.589 billion in August 2019. From January to August 2020, cash remittances amounted to US$19.285 billion which is 2.6% lower than the US$19.808 billion reported in the comparative period last year. This was due to the decline in remittances from both land-based which fell by 1.9 percent to US$15.183 billion from US$15.476 billion and sea-based workers with 5.3 percent to US$4.101 billion from US$4.332 billion.
The decline in remittances in August 2020 compared to the level in the same month last year was felt in Saudi Arabia, Japan and the UAE.However, these were partly offset by remittance growth from the United States (U.S.), Singapore and Malaysia.In cumulative share, receipts from the US registered the highest share to total cash from Overseas Filipinos’ remittances year-to-date at 40.2 percent followed by Singapore, The United Kingdom, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Qatar.The combined remittances from these countries accounted for 78.9 percent of total cash remittances.(Melo M. Acuña)
Employees from the Department of Foreign Affairs welcome overseas Filipinos from different countries. Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said there are over 250,000 foreign-based Filipinos have returned home since the COVID-19 pandemic. CDFA Photos)